Yellowknife (Feb 17/03) - Monday's power outage affected everybody in Dettah, Ndilo, Rae-Edzo and Yellowknife.

Norm McBride, operations manager for Northwest Territories Power Corporation, said it was the second outage this winter. The first was on Jan. 4.

"It's been happening once or twice a season," he said. "All indications suggest that it's frost on the line."

The outage lasted about an hour in most areas and the NTPC suspects it was caused by an overcurrent fault somewhere on the 145-kilometre line between Yellowknife and the Snare hydro site.

Allen Mueller, manager of customer service for Northland Utilities, said that type of fault is caused when two lines slap together and short circuit.

"We suspect it was maybe wind," he said. "Ice can also cause this.

"Every so often it comes up and bites us in the you-know-what."

The power corporation is patrolling the line by helicopter, McBride said. It believes they've located the problem 65 kilometres north of Yellowknife.

Restoration of power to Dettah was delayed by another hour because the power corporation had to check the Bluefish transmission line's integrity.